"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play…it is war minus the shooting."
Paul Putz
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Spirit of the Game, New York, Oxford University Press, 2024
This book details how a group of Protestant men (and women after 1970) built a lasting evangelical sports subculture, a movement which the author calls the “Christian athlete movement”. Their achievement has been so successful that, the author argues, “a strong case can be made that there is no public workplace or industry in American culture today with a greater concentration of organised and committed Christians than big time sports”. The book comes out of Paul Putz’s PhD research “American protestants and the creation of Sportianity 1920-1980” but the book adds the next 45 years.
There are many things that make Putz’s book outstanding. It is painstakingly researched. The account of the development of Christian ministry in and around the big American sports is unique and helps us understand how we got to where we are now. Issues are identified as part of the story - race, sexuality, theological differences etc. The origins of ministry to and in sport are documented as never before. The book will be a classic, the standard reference work for our understanding of the development of the relationship between sport and Christianity
A 1976 series of articles in Sports Illustrated by Frank Deford, “Call it Sportianity”, gave a lot of publicity to the growing Christian engagement with sport. The movement has in the modern era become so successful that Putz can write: “Pick any big game in college or professional football, baseball and basketball after 1980 and there was sure to be a cadre of self-identified Christian athletes and coaches on both teams and probably a team chaplain or sports minister too”.
The two major players in the development of the Christian Athlete movement were the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, (founded in 1954) and Athletes in Action, founded 1966, (a branch of Campus Crusade which started in 1951). The book refers to “animosity and suspicion between FCA and AIA”. A third organization, Professional Athletes Outreach was founded in the 1970s. Putz wrote of it “Frustrated with the bickering organisations, Pro Football players led by Norm Evans decided to take control of the event and create their own organisation naming it Pro Athletes Outreach”. PAO’s stated aim is “to unite a community of pro athletes and couples to grow as disciples of Jesus, and positively impact their spheres of influence”. FCA describes itself as a “community working to see the world transformed by Jesus Christ through the influence of coaches and athletes”. AIA lists its goal as “helping competitors find a relationship with the One who truly satisfies” but also refers to athletes and coaches using “their platform to make a difference in the world”. We will look at this in more detail in the next paragraphs but it will be clear than the emphasis was more on the opportunity for well-known athletes to spread the message of salvation through their platform, rather than developing a particularly Christian way to compete to the glory of God. I was reminded of the comment by McCasland on the relationship between the athlete Eric Liddell and DP Thompson who discipled him and arranged evangelistic speaking opportunities for him, that two things were clear to Liddell: “(1) God loved him; and (2) D.P.Thompson had a wonderful plan for his life”.
Jim Mathisen has remarked that one of the surprises in seeking to understand the Christian movement in sport was that it seemed to operate without any agreed theology of sport.
Don McClanen, the founder of FCA, is quoted, by Putz, making the rather crass comment if an athlete “can endorse shaving cream, razor blades and cigarettes surely they can endorse the Lord.” McClanen’s plan was to organise Christian athletes and coaches to project the Christian image to fans, as a network of Christian athletes and coaches who would speak openly about their faith in Jesus. Similarly Fisher, in his book God’s voice to the pro, describes Doc Eschelman eating his breakfast cereal and seeing pictures of NFL players on the packet, started wondering if Christian NFL players could endorse Jesus instead of breakfast cereal.
As Putz says the “original vision viewed famous athletes not as a constituency to be served but as a force to be mobilised”. Putz referred to Jerry Terrell of the Kansas City Royals in a 1979 post-game interview speaking about his faith as the start of that kind of answer as a phenomenon which developed to include players kneeling in the end zone, pointing finger to the sky, NFL players huddling to pray together, players from both teams.
The book discusses theological differences between the ministries, particularly AIA and FCA suggesting that the difference between the two was that FCA told young people to follow Christ and get involved in church but did not always zero in on the born-again experience that neo-evangelicals believed was essential to true Christianity. John Hannah, founder of AIA had started with the ambitious global vision for the evangelization of the entire world through sport. While FCA would eventually become identified with evangelicalism, its origins were more mainline protestant. Campus Crusade tended to emphasise “Keswick* and premillennial themes and a zealous commitment to winning souls to Christ”.
Putz refers to different factions - one believing that Christianity was a tool for maximising one’s athletic potential, another stressing that Christian athletes should simply delight in the gift of sports, content in who they already were. Some urged Christian athletes to use the platform of sport for evangelistic aims, while others argued that instrumentalizing sports in that way led to an ethic that only valued winners. When Bill Glass, an ex-pro turned Christian worker, was asked about an ethical issue in sport, his simplistic answer was that if athletes and administrators had a personal relationship with Christ, the issues would resolve themselves.
One disturbing aspect of the development of the movement - with hindsight and certainly from a British perspective - is the acceptance and even promotion of racist attitudes Race relations and policy is a theme running through the book. It would be a slight over-simplification to say that athletes are generally black and those managing them or administering their sport (or financing the Christian ministry around them) were largely white - but only a slight oversimplification. For many Christian leaders, racial segregation was entirely compatible with firm Christian convictions. The book states: “It was an era in which many Christians had distinctly racist views”. FCA’s policy is described as “constructing a colorblind consensus”, a compromise which involved supporting the inclusion of black athletes within white sports institutions, while resisting calls for broader structural changes; supporting integration but not desegregation. The book says that FCA did not turn away black athletes or coaches, but in a predominantly white organisation many did not feel welcomed.
AIA and PAO evangelical Christian theology “offered an individualistic path to Christian maturity that sidestepped growing concern over the social and ethical dimensions of big time sports”.
The book refers repeatedly to racial imbalance and prejudice as the context in which the Christian athlete movement operated. Examples quoted include:
in the 1960s a survey of southern Baptists found that nearly 90% of its churches would not allow black people to be church members;
black players were left out of college teams when playing a white southern team;
the preponderance black players but an almost total lack of black coaches;
(American) Football black players more likely to play in positions that required brawn that brain as white head coaches often believed that black players did not have the leadership skills or temperament to play in the key positions;
the example of Tony Dungy, an outstanding college quarterback, who could only get an NFL contract by playing in a lower profile position;
at the highest level of college sport, black athletes participated in a system led primarily by white coaches, administrators and sports ministry staff;
A 1992 book of testimonies by Christian baseball players written by Sport Spectrum’s Dave Brannon provided a snapshot of the Christian athlete movement in baseball. Written with the support of baseball chapel it featured 29 profiles 25 white men 4 black men and no Latino men;
in the 1990s, AIA had only 1 black chaplain out of 16 staffers serving in the NFL, where a majority of players were black;
there was a telling comment from a black player who noted that only 2 of the 31 head coaches were black. “It seems were good enough to play the game but not good enough to coach”.
Going back to theology, racial issues also emphasized the theological differences in the movement with middlebrow protestants favouring education and the neo-evangelicals believing that getting people saved would solve the racial problem. The book refers to the individualistic color-blind approach of white evangelicals. There is a shocking story of a pastor using Scripture (1 Peter 2:18ff) and the command for slaves to obey their masters, to justify white supremacy.
Putz writes that redressing the racial imbalance was a “tricky proposition for (Christian sports ministry) organisations whose donor and consumer base was primarily white and conservative”.
One of the major achievements of the Christian athlete movement was the development chaplaincy and match-day chapels across the major pro sports to the point where it has come normal practice. Baseball Chapel flourished with the official approval of the commissioner’s office. By the 1980s Baseball Chapel oversaw a system of volunteer chaplains who had been placed with every major and minor league team all of whom signed a document affirming Baseball chapel’s Evangelical doctrinal statement. Because of Sunday play Christian college players in the 1950s and 60s often turned down NFL contracts as they were told Sunday football as a sin. Bill Glass was an exception playing for Detroit and Cleveland 1958-68. After his career ended, he and Doc Eschelman started offering chaplain services to NFL teams and by 1975 every single NFL team held services. As time passed, NFL chaplaincy was largely undertaken by AIA and PAO.
American politics is very difficult for the non-American to understand. I attend church each Sunday with 150 people and I have honestly no clue how 99% vote. In UK circles it tends to be a private matter with no particular correlation between faith and a particular party. The concept, to quote Putz’s exact words, of “a world in which the Republican Party was viewed is the only choice for true Christians” is utterly bewildering! The issue for the Christian athlete movement was that black players, who generally came from communities that voted for or were sympathetic to the Democratic Party, found themselves entering a world of white Republican voters. Putz writes of the tension between the “white Christian right that wed conservative politics to the Christian faith and an increasingly multiracial constituency of Christian athletes who took a broader view of the political implications and possibilities of their faith”.
Sexuality became another point of contention from the 1990s onwards. Anti-gay pronouncements from leaders of the Christian athlete movement led to clashes with Christian gay rights advocates. There is a six page analysis of the issues under the heading of “sexuality”.
In an important final paragraph, the author reflects on future challenges for the Christian athlete movement as it deals with charismatic and Pentecostal theology, the prosperity gospel, Make America Great Again politics, pluralistic corporate structures of big time sports, Cultural diversity, Black Lives Matter, Gender and sexuality etc.
It is a great question to end on. What will the Christian athlete movement look like 20 years from now?
*A reference to the Keswick Convention which happened annually from 1875 onwards stressing the promotion of practical holiness and a deeper spiritual life